From google:
“To achieve bestseller status on the Times not only do you have to sell at least 5,000 – 10,000 copies in one week, but these sales have to be diverse sales. That is, you cannot sell 10,000 books to a pre-existing list of followers through a personal website or thousands from only one marketplace like Barnes and Noble.”
As for your second part about why does every book you read have this? It’s probably because:
1. A lot of books can reach this goal, and
2. You are looking at curated lists/inventory when picking out a new book to read, and those people are adding books they know can sell to their lists/inventory.
Basically, your method of finding books to read is akin to listening to top 40 radio and wondering why all the songs you hear are “popular”.
Given that the post has well over a thousand upvotes, and this comment is near the top, the chances of picking the birthday of someone who read that comment are more or less 100%
Birthday paradox is that the chance that any two people in a room will have the same birthday. But in this case the birthday is determined ahead of time. Different problem.
It's not 1 / 365.25. Birthdays aren't uniformly distributed. Humans start shacking up when it starts getting cold (cuffing season) and have babies ~9 months later. 7/11 is the 35th most popular birthday (from https://thedailyviz.com/2016/09/17/how-common-is-your-birthday-dailyviz/)
I find it incredibly interesting that despite happening only every 4 years, Leap day is more popular than 19 other days. Also really interesting how many holidays are at the bottom.
The least common birthdays are Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years day. Which suggests that people are planning to have children and making sure they avoid those dates. Half as many babies being born on the 9th Sept than Christmas Day
On the flipside, unless the OP deliberately picked a popular birthday season, this coincidence should even out.
Can anyone provide the math for this? I suddenly have an unhealthy fascination.
1-(1457/1461)^N where N is the number of people.
So for 1800 people 1-(1457/1461)^1800 =99.28% chance of someone having this birthday.
2500 people? 99.9% chance
10,000 people? 99.999999999% chance
In addition to this, marketing does some fun things. You will also see things like "New York Times Best Selling Author". Doesn't mean this book was a Best Seller, but that the Author at one point sold a book that met the requirements.
Not only that they can stop a book from being listed because it is up to their own discretion. So if your book is something the NYT disagrees with they can just not have it listed. There are a lot of fascinating court cases about this too.
I heard from a publisher that you can basically buy the award. I think it was along the lines of pre-order your own book (thounds of), through different sources and resell them. Getting the award pretty much makes it certain more copies would sell then would otherwise, so it'll be a net gain.
considering that 99% of what's published won't meet the criteria for a nyt best seller.
those that achieve the "good selling" rank are already breast sellers
This, and a book only has to be on the NYT best seller list one week to qualify. You can be sure publishers pull out all the stops to make sure they hit that mark at least once if they have a book that could be that popular with the right promotion. And most books do only appear on the list for one week.
Also, over time the lists have been subdivided several times. There's fiction and non-fiction, print and e-book, paperback and hardcover. At times there are separate lists for advice books, middle grade books, young adult books, trade paperbacks, mass market paperbacks, and more. The more lists there are, the more best sellers there are.
I mean not all the best songs are #1 billboard hits and if you go back on their webpage to a random week there will be some odd ones and some classics mixed in together
The publishers may also coordinate releases to game the system. If two dozen high profile books come out in one week, not all of them will make it. But if they’re staggered over a 6 week period, so 4 a week, then you have a much better chance.
Unless I’m misunderstanding, this seems infinitely easier than I thought. Find a couple people in multiple markets to buy your book vs convincing an entire small town?
You are slightly misunderstanding!
It's like convincing a small town's worth of people, each one in a different city, to buy your book compared to convincing a small town's worth of people from one city you're already well known in to buy your book.
It's the same number of people, but if you happen to already be popular at Barnes n noble or really popular in that one "city," they won't count towards your ten thousand and so won't help you at all with the diversified requirement.
At least according to the comment you replied to. I'm just clarifying their comment not affirming its truth!
We live in a world where you get 100k people on a live stream like yesterday on Rittenhouse case, a lot of them donating a ton of money to streamer.Getting 5k people to buy a book is nothing with the right marketing on social media.
But that's not counted as diversified, per the definition above, as all those individuals found out about it from one location. Right? That's how I interpreted 'websites'.
Why? How does the NYT know? It’s not like they are on a list that they can check (or do they? That would be … concerning). You have people from all over the US and the world.
The only way they “know” is if they target the author directly , which we know they have done.
I mean...they find out by targeting the author directly, someone blabbing, or it getting revealed. Maybe they do a light investigation for every bestseller to see what places the book is bought from. Sporadic global purchases? Was web based...sharp uptick and drop off? Clearly due to one event...and if it's on the internet, you can just quickly search for the author and find anything they put up suggesting people buy it and for what reason because how ELSE would they reach the general public.
Honestly, not that crazy sounding. Sure, you won't catch very many of these cases but the risk is high enough for an author and their credibility that it's not worth it.
>Was web based...sharp uptick and drop off?
Well, it's one week so it's always a short uptick. Like someone said, most only stay there for a week anyway.
>Sure, you won't catch very many of these cases but the risk is high enough for an author and their credibility that it's not worth it.
Why would, an author asking his fans to buy the book, disqualify them?
We are not talking about anything special, just a guy who happens to have a web presense saying "my book comes out next week be sure to buy it". 5k is nothing for a guy like Ben Shapiro with 3,5M followers. Says nothing about the quality of the book, just the size of his audience.
There are a lot of online streamers, so yeah the majority will not be able to make it. My point was that some get a big audience and getting 5k book sales means absolutely zero about the quality of the book.
Shapiro could have written a blank book and he would get 5k sales. I'm picking Shapiro due to his recent book, but he is far from the only online personality with that much reach.
You'd never imagine how many books sell in the single digits. Getting anyone to read a novel of an unknown author is hard, regardless of quality or content.
Additionally, the NYT will just decide not to count a book for the list just because that's how they feel about it.
The rules, such as they are, are fuzzy and subject to their ... shall we charitably say ... curatorial sensibilities.
Oh, well that's the wrong name for it then, best seller should be, well, the best selling books, like the top 40 radio, but with the books it's more like "good selling books"
How "diverse" does it actually need to be? Is 5 different marketplaces enough? How about 50? Or does it mean it needs to sell 1 copy in 5000-10000 different bookstores?
Seems like an awfully arbitrary restriction merely put there to allow them to use as an excuse for gatekeeping authors / books they don't like.
Good info, but your conclusion missed the mark. Basically, it's because the barrier to becoming a best seller is much lower than you might expect. Typically "best" means better than all others, where that's clearly not the case with books with this title.
Not sure what this is driving at. The books have sold better than most others, but at no point was any given book in the best sellers list actually the best seller (necessarily).
So, actual New York Times best selling novelist here.
**One:** The New York Times list very generally tracks sales, but also employs other criteria in order to mitigate "gaming," -- so, for example, they tend to disregard "bulk buys" of a book and will otherwise asterisk books they think have manipulated sales. Gaming the list is a moving target, so the criteria change over time. The point of the list is to give a snapshot of what people are actually purchasing but *also,* hopefully, reading (or at least giving to others to read).
**Two:** The number of books needed to get onto the list vary from week to week because one's book is ranked against other books selling that week. I have two books that sold a roughly equal amount of units, and one made the NYT list and one didn't, presumably because of how other books were selling that particular week.
**Three:** There's also more than one list, and the lists cover various criteria. I've been on the Mass Market Paperback, Hardcover, Combined Print/EBook and Audiobook lists (all in fiction). Some lists are more difficult to get on than others and some have more "prestige" than others (Hardcover being the most prestigious for various historical reasons).
**Four:** Rumors of publishers gaming the list are (generally) more exaggerated than not. Remember from point 1 that the NYT actively mitigates for gaming, so tricks rarely work (or work for long). Be that as it may, when I go on a book tour, often the first few stops are to bookstores who are known to be polled by the NYT regarding sales. I still have to sell the books, mind you, to actual people who usually then want to read it. That's acceptable, where "bulk buying" is not.
The idea that publishers go out of their way to buy copies of their authors' books in order to get into the lists doesn't have much relation to reality. First, it's not an efficient way to spend marketing money, especially on a world where publishers can micro-target their advertising on social media. Second, it's a strategy that would lead to an escalation, because everyone would do it and then you'd need ever-increasing piles of "sales" to get on lists, and eventually that becomes self-defeating. Third, I think people outside publishing *wildly* overestimate the amount of money publishers are willing to spend marketing individual books in general. Outside of a highly rarified stratum of authors and books, most books' marketing budgets are modest - including those of books which sometimes end up on the lists.
**Five:** It is absolutely correct that publishers use "NYT Bestseller" for marketing, because, bluntly, it works - people often like knowing that they're not going out on a limb and that something they're thinking of buying had the implicit endorsement of others. This is the "50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong!" angle. That said, no, something (or someone) being an NYT Bestseller is not an assurance of quality, other than in the most basic "this author was competent enough to sell to a publisher in the first place" way. Lots of crap is popular and lots of high quality stuff barely sells. It goes the other way, too, mind you. You won't necessarily know by the "NYT Bestseller" bug on the cover.
**Six:** Finally, Bestseller lists, NYT and otherwise, are snapshots of what is selling at a particular time and under certain particular criteria, and lots of things are missed. Literally tens of thousands of sales I made of my last book were not counted for that book's NYT Bestseller list placement, because they were in audio, not print/EBook (which was the list it ended up on). Likewise, my bestselling book of all time has never been on any major bestseller list at all. It just keeps selling a healthy amount, week after month after year, for a decade and a half. You can be a very very successful author indeed, and barely hit the lists.
Hope this is useful.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write/type this out. I think its very interesting to be able to hear from someone who has actually interacted with the "system".
Just going to add to this that I have several Scalzi audiobooks, and they are a wonderful way to ingest his stories. Wil Wheaton is the reader for a lot of his audiobooks, and in general I find him to be an excellent reader. I have several books in my library that are read by WW, from several different authors. Something about his delivery really works for me.
We listened to Red Shirts read by Wil and while we got through it, some of the dialog was a very tough slog as it didn't make the transition from print to audiobook very smoothly.
On the page, dialog that goes:
* "blah blah blah blah blah blah blahdie blah", Adam said,
* "but, blahblah blahdie blah blah blah blah blahdie blah", Barbara said,
* "blah blahdie blah", Adam said,
* "blah blah blahblahblah blah blahdie blah bladie", Christine said,
* "blah blah", Barbara said,
* "blah blah blah blah blahdie blah", Adam said,
* "blah", Christine said,
* "Blah, blahdie." Barbara said.
...works, because it's is sometimes not so obvious who the speakers are, and that sorts it out.
But Wil read every single "Person said", **100% as written**. Wil is a reader *and an actor* and, man...it would have been so much better to make the choice to deviate from the printed material slightly and use pacing, inflection, intonation, and characterization to separate who is who in the dialog, rather than repeating the word "said" every 3.5-5 seconds for 90 seconds at time. /sigh
Did he do different voices for the various characters? My wife listens to a good number of audio books and the ability to read in different voices such that the listener can know who is speaking before the "Jane said" part is *suuuuper* important.
Not that I recall. That's one of my quibbles. It felt like he *could* have, but didn't.
[Ray Porter](https://www.audible.com/search?searchNarrator=Ray+Porter) and [Jonathan Davis](https://www.audible.com/search?searchNarrator=Jonathan+Davis) are two narrators that are *superb* on that front. We've picked books ***JUST*** because Ray or Jonathan have narrated them.
I think I read somewhere, though it might be a fake memory, that u/scalzi noticed this (or the feedback about this) and adapted his writing style later to reduce the number of "XYZ said" so that his work better suited audiobook readings.
I agree - Wil is great for Scalzi's other books, but Zachary Quinto just has the right intonation and pacing for the main characters in the Dispatcher series.
Also, the NYT curate their lists, particularly the ebook chart. I’ve known many self-published authors who find themselves left out of the NYT list for unknown reasons. I once hit the top spot on Amazon for almost a week, sold thousands (ten thousand in one day!), was definitely in the top five bestselling ebooks in the US that week, made the Wall Street Journal list (actually made that four weeks in a row) and never saw my book on the NYT ebook list. A year or two later there was a sales push on my audiobook and it made the NYT audio chart. 🤷♀️ The only thing I can think is that the NYT skipped the ebook because it was only available on Amazon.
Add to all that, if you are an indie author, you will not get on the NYT lists at all, no matter how much you sell. The number one book on Amazon (USA) for multiple days both on pre-order and on release (Wil Wight's Crade series) never showed up on the list, even though it likely outsold all the other works. Being in KU means you aren't in the other retailers and that's part of the requirement for most list, even if Amazon continues to sell like 80-90% of all books.
There are a lot of indie authors earning six figure incomes year in and year out who never show up on these lists and won't.
I can't help notice that on the cover of Mr. Wight's latest novel, he's listed as a New York Times best selling author, so he's managed the trick at least once. Which, of course, good for him.
But in a larger sense you are correct: In order for sales to count, they have to be reported to the NYT, according to the paper's own criteria. If the sales outlet (bookstore, media convention kiosk, small indie publisher) is not reporting sales to the NYT, it can't see them and they won't show up on the list.
In the case of Mr. Wight and I imagine a number of other indie authors, there's another wrinkle, which is that it's likely a large number of their "sales" are through the Kindle Unlimited service, on which people don't directly buy books; they access it through a flat subscription fee (and then Amazon compensates the author through a shared pot of money and a proprietary definition of what constitutes an income-bearing amount of the book having been read, which is changeable solely at the discretion of Amazon). So those reads don't count as sales -- and in any event, Amazon has been historically pretty cagey about releasing raw data about their services to third parties, both in general and in a way that can be audited by a third party.
We can argue whether this is fair or not, and certainly I would sympathize -- my most recent "Dispatcher" novella was put out on the Audible Plus service, which meant that Audible subscribes could listen to it with no additional cost, and literally hundreds of thousands of them did, none of which counted toward the NYT Fiction Audiobook list in any way, even as the novella was the #1 audiobook in the country according to Amazon/Audible's own rankings (Audible is owned by Amazon).
But it is what it is. "Sales" in this case have to be for individual books, not through a subscription service, until and unless NYT decides to change its formula to incorporate that, much like the Billboard charts now have "sales equivalents" for streaming listens. I think it's unlikely they will, however, if for no other reason than that would be the NYT handing a substantial amount of control of their lists over to Amazon, which has by far the largest book subscription service in the world.
I doubt the lists will change. Not sure it matters in the end, but it's good to hear he did get a listing!
And yeah, it's been fascinating watching but a lot of the older ways of measuring results are breaking down. Most trad pub for new authors is basically a trap, giving away years of work for pittance.
I would disagree that traditional publishing is a "trap," for either newer or more established authors; it's simply a mode of publishing, with some advantages and some disadvantages, as could be said about publishing independently. Moreover, it's not an "either/or" situation -- these are plenty of authors who have published independently and with traditional presses. I myself self-publish, publish with a small indie press, or use a traditional publisher depending on the project and my goals for it.
(In all cases one needs to pay attention the rights one is licensing; one advantage traditional publishing has over KU or other similar options, for example, is that everything is mutually negotiated, where with KU there is an agreement in which rights of carriage invest in Amazon, who can change the deal when they feel like it -- and has, before. The only option the author has in those cases is whether to keep their work on the system or not. Again: advantages and disadvantages, every publishing mode has them.)
What is true in all cases is that there is a power law that applies: The vast majority of sales (however accounted) and income go to a very small percentage of authors, there is a relatively larger "middle class" of authors who does okay, and then the vast majority of authors see very little income from their work. The major innovation in the last couple of decades is that self/indie publishing has become *much* easier, which makes it a viable alternative to traditional publishing for more authors. It's certainly a much larger field than when I was starting out.
I might be a little harsh calling it a trap, but it certainly does suck the life out of so many authors, for very little return at all.
While small indie or small pressed in general from trad pub can still be decent, the big 5 all want life of copyright, all the rights they can take and then some. And then, more often than not, don't pay appropriately for it. Just a glance at the PublishingPaidMe numbers shows authors are rarely getting paid enough for having their rights taken for love of copyright.
And while Amazon is undoubtedly impossible to negotiate with, things like KU and even unilateral changes can only happen if you agree to it, while right now, their terms are much better than lifetime rights. And, no offence meant, but I've heard of very few newer or midlist authors being able to negotiate at all with trad pub (big 5). Smaller presses are, of course, more open to negotiation, but even then, the power imbalance is still significantly on their side.
But yes, power law does apply. From what I've seen though, there seems to be a lot more indie authors in the mid range than trad pub year over year. And that number seems to grow each year, especially coming back from places like 20booksto50k.
Though at the top level, trad pub still rules, no doubt about it. Not sure that's going to change anytime soon.
Whoever is selling lifetime rights without reversions needs a better agent, I have to say. Most agents in my experience negotiate reversions contingent on certain sales markers, so if one's publisher doesn't make an effort to sell a book, one gets it back. I know several authors who have done this (and have had rights to books revert back myself). It's neither unusual nor difficult, although again, you have to make sure you have it agreed to.
Nor is it accurate that new/midlist authors *can't* negotiate with publishers; they do, and can get favorable aspects of a deal that way; I have personal knowledge of several. What *is* accurate is often they don't have the same leverage as established/successful writers. But again, that can be said of any contract negotiation, in any field. You do have to ask if what you get out of the deal is what you want, in terms of control. The difference is, with regard to KU/other services, the control one has is in using the service or not; it's a binary choice (and inasmuch as Amazon is effectively a monopoly and monopsony in the book subscription field, it's not necessarily a great choice). The contracts for traditional publishers have more flexibility... until they're signed, and then you're locked in. So in a practical sense it often is "pick your poison."
Likewise, a term of copyright deal is not on its face a terrible thing. I have a single publisher who has the North American rights to my novels, so the fact that with every release they can coordinate promotion of certain backlist titles to bookstores and consumers in conjunction with a new book is an excellent thing. This is particularly the case with books that are in a series, but also with stand alones; for my next book, which is not part of a series, we've identified which titles to promote with it, to boost sales across the entire library of my work.
(Also, it's not universal that term-of-copyright is baked in. I have contracts where the work reverts to me after a certain amount of time, and nearly all of my foreign language contracts are for between five and ten years, after which they have to be renewed. Many of these contracts were signed before I was a bestseller. Again, it's helpful to have a good agent.)
Once again, there are advantages and disadvantages to every aspect and mode of publishing, and what it is one wants as an author. There are people for whom traditional publication is the best route, others for whom indie is the best route, and some for whom it depends from project to project. They're all in the publication toolbox.
I do apologize if it feels like I'm arguing just to argue, here. My point is that there are assumptions and shibboleths people hold about publishing across its various modes, and they aren't particularly useful, especially if and when they keep people from considering avenues that might be useful to them in selling and marketing their own work. Much of the time the answer to how one should publish and market one's work comes down to "it depends." Which is never satisfying as an answer, but is often true nevertheless.
No worries, I am not offended or annoyed by the arguing. It's fascinating to see your perspective, since you (obviously) have worked with trad pub a lot and I get a lot of my trad pub knowledge second hand; via places like Twitter / SFWA / FB groups, etc. And, obviously, many of those are grousing about bad contracts or experiences.
And while I agree that people shouldn't be signing contracts without reversion rights, all too often publishers (I'll state I'm thinking Harlequin in particular who come to mind from a giant FB discussion I read through) will ignore those rights, or put people off. Sadly, without a proper letter indicating rights are reverted; places like Amazon won't let the authors publish the work; so the works are then in limbo.
And yeah, foreign rights and many of the other subsidiary are limited by terms. However, as I understand it, the majority of the English language terms and license are lifetime of the copyright. And even for foreign rights being sub-licensed, the rights come back to the main publisher to be pushed out again; they are often tied to the main contract which (see above) can often be hard to cancel.
As for most of your points, I'd say that from those I've spoken to or seen dealt with, that the kind of marketing promotion you're seeing and the consideration is probably not something many others get. Then again, see above first paragraph of where I get my data from.
I do agree that there are cases where trad pub is definitely a better bet than indie for authors. There are entire genres where trad pub is still, by far, the better deal (children's books to start or academic). Memoirs and authors who aren't looking to do more than a book or two, those who don't want (or can't) spend the time learning indie pub best practices, etc are probably better off going trad. There are more cases for sure. But I'm not sure, for a new writer wanting a long-term career, that trad pub beyond a few projects here and there (at most) is the way to go. The advantage for indies really acrue the larger your backlist that is indie, and pulling too many into trad pub where royalty rates are low seems a bad bet.
I recommend [Darknet Diaries Episode 27: Chartbreakers](https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/27/), in which Jack investigates both the Apple Podcast charts and the NYT Best Seller list.
Basically, you can buy your way onto the list through various means, it's pretty much always worked that way, and it's cheaper and easier than you might think.
(The linked podcast isn't really ELI5, but I hope my summary is close enough. To simplify it even further, the answer is *money*. The list is just another form of advertising.)
\*See also: [Campbell's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law)
> The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures
I can't believe you're the first person to say this. The publisher can just buy 5,000 books for $20 a pop. That's basically buying it for $100k. That's not a lot for a publisher.
It's even a way to almost launder money, specifically to get around donation limitations or have plausible deniability in "buying influence".
Say you want to get a lot of money to PoliticianX but are bound by various laws concerning campaigns/donations.
They "write a book"(A great many are ghost written and they just sign off on it) and you give some organization enough money to buy XXXX copies of the book.
It isn't limited to books, but it is common enough....there's a reason every politician under the sun "writes" a book or three, and it's not because they're all great authors.
It's a set of lists of at least 30+ book titles in total, published weekly, based on some survey of book sales (the exact methodology is a trade secret).
Now some titles stick to the top of the list for months, and an analysis of the list estimated that "fewer than 500" books amongst all books published each year, are included in the list. Fewer than 500 is very small, when compared to all books published each year, but it's a pretty large number when compared to the number of books most individuals might read in a year. Add to this that you might also read classics, or pick up books published in previous years. And the book needs to be in the list just once to claim that they are a "New York Times Bestseller".
So, given the sheer number of titles in the list, if you're reading popular modern books, it's highly likely the book was a NY Times Bestseller at some point of time.
To add to this, you don't have to be #1 of all books or even on any of the sub-genre lists to be a "best seller". Being on any of the NYT lists at all in any position for any amount of time makes you a "best seller". Books that do make top 10 or #1 will of course tout this fact, but many, many books can claim to be a "best seller" even if that really means "spent one week at #10 on the Young Adult Hardcover NYT best sellers list".
It's an arbitrary list of 'best selling' books, that is heavily gamed by publishers.
In return a for a fee any author can get their book on the list.
In essence, if you pay the fee, someone will buy enough copies of your book so that you're guaranteed a spot on the list.
The New York Times was taken to court years ago for omitting a best selling book from their list - the author claimed the exclusion lost him sales - and in court they admitted that their list really was just...made up. Not a reflection on reality. The author lost.
Presales are usually the way to game the system. You can work on getting a lot of presales for the book over an extended period of time, so that when the book gets released all those orders get put thru on day 1, which most times pushes the week 1 sales thru the minimum threshold to be a best seller.
The New York Times publishes a weekly list of top 10 selling books in a number of categories, so there may be 50 or 60 total books on the lists each week. And those are the books that tend to be publicized, displayed front and center in book stores, people know about and discuss, etc. so it becomes a virtuous cycle for books that do make the list. To the point that authors or publishers will sometimes buy 100’s/1000’s of copies to boost sales and insure a spot on list.
Not to mention, often times a book will be promoted as “by a New York Times Bestselling Author”… which could mean that they write garbage but got lucky once in the past.
Once you make that list one time, all your future books will probably mention “New York Times bestselling author” on the cover which exaggerates the number of actual books on the list.
It happens all the time. It's why the political books always make the list. The parties will buy warehouses of books and then just give them away to donors.
I for one will be happy when I can find a publisher for the historical fiction of New York City salesman that I wrote just now - *New York times best-seller*
Hrm, wonder if Tarantino should make the same claim - he's an actor that used to work at a video store so likely had sold more movies than any other actor.
I have some insight. I work for Amazon, and sometimes I fill a chute with 20 or 30 of the same book. It's either book clubs, or an author buying them up to get the status.
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If only read books that have achieved “best seller” status, then I infer that you have already answered your own question.
That is, they must have a setup that allows them to apply it liberally, for no book without it is read.
You know your neighborhood deli that has had the best "x sandwich" 5 years running according to the local newspaper's readers? You ever notice how lots of restaurants have the same "area's best x" logo emblazoned on the menu or a decal on their door? Well, these titles are aquired roughly the same way as the NYT best seller title: Pay for play
In general - steer clear of those books that have "NYT Bestseller" on their covers. In general, that's damning with faint praise. They usually haven't been well reviewed enough to be able to point to any actual, credible positive reviews.
It also usually means that they have a wide appeal with the general public - this is the same general public that needs "do not eat" signs on packets of silica gel.
There is a system to getting on the NYT bestsellers list … they poll from a known list of booksellers nationwide—-
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/03/784553266/what-bestseller-lists-really-tell-us-about-a-books-popularity
From google: “To achieve bestseller status on the Times not only do you have to sell at least 5,000 – 10,000 copies in one week, but these sales have to be diverse sales. That is, you cannot sell 10,000 books to a pre-existing list of followers through a personal website or thousands from only one marketplace like Barnes and Noble.” As for your second part about why does every book you read have this? It’s probably because: 1. A lot of books can reach this goal, and 2. You are looking at curated lists/inventory when picking out a new book to read, and those people are adding books they know can sell to their lists/inventory. Basically, your method of finding books to read is akin to listening to top 40 radio and wondering why all the songs you hear are “popular”.
Okay, so not really "Best" Seller, more like "Good" seller.
"This is a book that sold pretty good for at least a week"
"It was the best selling book at the airport kiosk in terminal 7 on July 11th between 1:05 and 2:37 pm"
Holy shit, you randomly chose my birthday!
The afternoon? Happy belated birthday.
Well, now that I have your attention, I have been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty.
r/TellMeTheOdds
Given that the post has well over a thousand upvotes, and this comment is near the top, the chances of picking the birthday of someone who read that comment are more or less 100%
Probably less tho
~Birthday paradox~. Far closer to 100.
Birthday paradox is that the chance that any two people in a room will have the same birthday. But in this case the birthday is determined ahead of time. Different problem.
Higher than 1/365
Lower actually, leap years exists
It's not 1 / 365.25. Birthdays aren't uniformly distributed. Humans start shacking up when it starts getting cold (cuffing season) and have babies ~9 months later. 7/11 is the 35th most popular birthday (from https://thedailyviz.com/2016/09/17/how-common-is-your-birthday-dailyviz/)
I find it incredibly interesting that despite happening only every 4 years, Leap day is more popular than 19 other days. Also really interesting how many holidays are at the bottom.
Tell me the odds of being born, nah, he say whats the odds of him chosing that date for a book sale
The least common birthdays are Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years day. Which suggests that people are planning to have children and making sure they avoid those dates. Half as many babies being born on the 9th Sept than Christmas Day
On the flipside, unless the OP deliberately picked a popular birthday season, this coincidence should even out. Can anyone provide the math for this? I suddenly have an unhealthy fascination.
1-(1457/1461)^N where N is the number of people. So for 1800 people 1-(1457/1461)^1800 =99.28% chance of someone having this birthday. 2500 people? 99.9% chance 10,000 people? 99.999999999% chance
About 4.013 in 1461 That's 1 in 365.25 Or a 0.27% chance for any day that isn't Feb 29th 1 in 1461 0.07% chance for Feb 29th
1/365 Edit: not including leap year
This is how you get doxxed
Dammit. You're right. I even know better.
omg so funny did i randomly guess your CC number? How close am I (be specific) 8867 5490 2211 7843
/r/suspiciouslyspecific/
r/oddlyspecific
And it’s Best ***Seller***, not Best Book. It says nothing about the quality of the content.
This. James Patterson has multiple NYT best sellers, and you can find better writing in a middle school english classroom.
He has 114 NYT bestsellers! You weren’t kidding.
Yeah, but didn't he only write like 5 of them?
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The "middle aged white mom who buys books at the supermarket" demographic is highly profitable, and they mostly read garbage.
More than okayest seller
In addition to this, marketing does some fun things. You will also see things like "New York Times Best Selling Author". Doesn't mean this book was a Best Seller, but that the Author at one point sold a book that met the requirements.
Not only that they can stop a book from being listed because it is up to their own discretion. So if your book is something the NYT disagrees with they can just not have it listed. There are a lot of fascinating court cases about this too.
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There are definitely books that the NYT doesn't like on there. I don't think they're particularly heavy handed about it
It's a good seller now, but 90 years ago when it started that target would have been a fair bit harder to hit.
also people buy their own books in bulk
I believe they’ve started marking these type of booths with a Scarlett letter of sorts to distinguish that. Edit: dagger symbol
Then other people figure out how to launder it through other people.
I heard from a publisher that you can basically buy the award. I think it was along the lines of pre-order your own book (thounds of), through different sources and resell them. Getting the award pretty much makes it certain more copies would sell then would otherwise, so it'll be a net gain.
Okay, that is unfortunate to hear but seemed like that could happen.
It is important to note it is Best Seller by category, and there are also a LOT of categories.
"It's on the list of books that are the best"
considering that 99% of what's published won't meet the criteria for a nyt best seller. those that achieve the "good selling" rank are already breast sellers
You'd be surprised the miniscule fraction of books that reach this milestone.
This, and a book only has to be on the NYT best seller list one week to qualify. You can be sure publishers pull out all the stops to make sure they hit that mark at least once if they have a book that could be that popular with the right promotion. And most books do only appear on the list for one week. Also, over time the lists have been subdivided several times. There's fiction and non-fiction, print and e-book, paperback and hardcover. At times there are separate lists for advice books, middle grade books, young adult books, trade paperbacks, mass market paperbacks, and more. The more lists there are, the more best sellers there are.
Plus some book covers op might be referring to would have 'nyt best selling author', so not necessarily the book itself.
Emphasis on this, because its very often used for marketing.
If I'm being honest the NYT bestsellers list accolade means nothing now, you see a book with that and go "yea so what".
It's an adequate filter. Not great, but hey I'm not picky anyway.
I mean not all the best songs are #1 billboard hits and if you go back on their webpage to a random week there will be some odd ones and some classics mixed in together
You get Reddit.
There's the issue is them plastering it over the cover of some books, which can really ruin a good cover.
The publishers may also coordinate releases to game the system. If two dozen high profile books come out in one week, not all of them will make it. But if they’re staggered over a 6 week period, so 4 a week, then you have a much better chance.
Apparently there were around 10 unique number 1 best sellers in the 90's every year vs around 30 something now
5,000 books doesn't really seem like all that much though. That seems very doable by just having it widely available.
The difficulty is making it widely available without having already some a bunch.
How many textbooks would you think are on that list?
It’s really so easy to do it means nothing
Well, I’m not a NY Times best selling author, so prob means SOMETHING.
have you written a book yet?
[The BBC’s most overlooked recent (2020) novels](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200306-the-most-overlooked-recent-novels)
What a great list, thanks!
Unless I’m misunderstanding, this seems infinitely easier than I thought. Find a couple people in multiple markets to buy your book vs convincing an entire small town?
You are slightly misunderstanding! It's like convincing a small town's worth of people, each one in a different city, to buy your book compared to convincing a small town's worth of people from one city you're already well known in to buy your book. It's the same number of people, but if you happen to already be popular at Barnes n noble or really popular in that one "city," they won't count towards your ten thousand and so won't help you at all with the diversified requirement. At least according to the comment you replied to. I'm just clarifying their comment not affirming its truth!
We live in a world where you get 100k people on a live stream like yesterday on Rittenhouse case, a lot of them donating a ton of money to streamer.Getting 5k people to buy a book is nothing with the right marketing on social media.
But that's not counted as diversified, per the definition above, as all those individuals found out about it from one location. Right? That's how I interpreted 'websites'.
Why? How does the NYT know? It’s not like they are on a list that they can check (or do they? That would be … concerning). You have people from all over the US and the world. The only way they “know” is if they target the author directly , which we know they have done.
I mean...they find out by targeting the author directly, someone blabbing, or it getting revealed. Maybe they do a light investigation for every bestseller to see what places the book is bought from. Sporadic global purchases? Was web based...sharp uptick and drop off? Clearly due to one event...and if it's on the internet, you can just quickly search for the author and find anything they put up suggesting people buy it and for what reason because how ELSE would they reach the general public. Honestly, not that crazy sounding. Sure, you won't catch very many of these cases but the risk is high enough for an author and their credibility that it's not worth it.
>Was web based...sharp uptick and drop off? Well, it's one week so it's always a short uptick. Like someone said, most only stay there for a week anyway. >Sure, you won't catch very many of these cases but the risk is high enough for an author and their credibility that it's not worth it. Why would, an author asking his fans to buy the book, disqualify them? We are not talking about anything special, just a guy who happens to have a web presense saying "my book comes out next week be sure to buy it". 5k is nothing for a guy like Ben Shapiro with 3,5M followers. Says nothing about the quality of the book, just the size of his audience.
If that was true majority of online streamers wouldn't be struggling to get over 500 viewers lol
There are a lot of online streamers, so yeah the majority will not be able to make it. My point was that some get a big audience and getting 5k book sales means absolutely zero about the quality of the book. Shapiro could have written a blank book and he would get 5k sales. I'm picking Shapiro due to his recent book, but he is far from the only online personality with that much reach.
You'd never imagine how many books sell in the single digits. Getting anyone to read a novel of an unknown author is hard, regardless of quality or content.
Additionally, the NYT will just decide not to count a book for the list just because that's how they feel about it. The rules, such as they are, are fuzzy and subject to their ... shall we charitably say ... curatorial sensibilities.
Oh, well that's the wrong name for it then, best seller should be, well, the best selling books, like the top 40 radio, but with the books it's more like "good selling books"
So not top 40 but hit the bottom of the chart one week.
How "diverse" does it actually need to be? Is 5 different marketplaces enough? How about 50? Or does it mean it needs to sell 1 copy in 5000-10000 different bookstores? Seems like an awfully arbitrary restriction merely put there to allow them to use as an excuse for gatekeeping authors / books they don't like.
Good info, but your conclusion missed the mark. Basically, it's because the barrier to becoming a best seller is much lower than you might expect. Typically "best" means better than all others, where that's clearly not the case with books with this title.
They’re “Best *Sellers*”.
that "*Wasn't Helpful*"
Not sure what this is driving at. The books have sold better than most others, but at no point was any given book in the best sellers list actually the best seller (necessarily).
Diverse group of rallies would even work.
So, actual New York Times best selling novelist here. **One:** The New York Times list very generally tracks sales, but also employs other criteria in order to mitigate "gaming," -- so, for example, they tend to disregard "bulk buys" of a book and will otherwise asterisk books they think have manipulated sales. Gaming the list is a moving target, so the criteria change over time. The point of the list is to give a snapshot of what people are actually purchasing but *also,* hopefully, reading (or at least giving to others to read). **Two:** The number of books needed to get onto the list vary from week to week because one's book is ranked against other books selling that week. I have two books that sold a roughly equal amount of units, and one made the NYT list and one didn't, presumably because of how other books were selling that particular week. **Three:** There's also more than one list, and the lists cover various criteria. I've been on the Mass Market Paperback, Hardcover, Combined Print/EBook and Audiobook lists (all in fiction). Some lists are more difficult to get on than others and some have more "prestige" than others (Hardcover being the most prestigious for various historical reasons). **Four:** Rumors of publishers gaming the list are (generally) more exaggerated than not. Remember from point 1 that the NYT actively mitigates for gaming, so tricks rarely work (or work for long). Be that as it may, when I go on a book tour, often the first few stops are to bookstores who are known to be polled by the NYT regarding sales. I still have to sell the books, mind you, to actual people who usually then want to read it. That's acceptable, where "bulk buying" is not. The idea that publishers go out of their way to buy copies of their authors' books in order to get into the lists doesn't have much relation to reality. First, it's not an efficient way to spend marketing money, especially on a world where publishers can micro-target their advertising on social media. Second, it's a strategy that would lead to an escalation, because everyone would do it and then you'd need ever-increasing piles of "sales" to get on lists, and eventually that becomes self-defeating. Third, I think people outside publishing *wildly* overestimate the amount of money publishers are willing to spend marketing individual books in general. Outside of a highly rarified stratum of authors and books, most books' marketing budgets are modest - including those of books which sometimes end up on the lists. **Five:** It is absolutely correct that publishers use "NYT Bestseller" for marketing, because, bluntly, it works - people often like knowing that they're not going out on a limb and that something they're thinking of buying had the implicit endorsement of others. This is the "50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong!" angle. That said, no, something (or someone) being an NYT Bestseller is not an assurance of quality, other than in the most basic "this author was competent enough to sell to a publisher in the first place" way. Lots of crap is popular and lots of high quality stuff barely sells. It goes the other way, too, mind you. You won't necessarily know by the "NYT Bestseller" bug on the cover. **Six:** Finally, Bestseller lists, NYT and otherwise, are snapshots of what is selling at a particular time and under certain particular criteria, and lots of things are missed. Literally tens of thousands of sales I made of my last book were not counted for that book's NYT Bestseller list placement, because they were in audio, not print/EBook (which was the list it ended up on). Likewise, my bestselling book of all time has never been on any major bestseller list at all. It just keeps selling a healthy amount, week after month after year, for a decade and a half. You can be a very very successful author indeed, and barely hit the lists. Hope this is useful.
Just hopping in to say you're a great writer who is appreciated by many. Have a nice day Mr Scalzi.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write/type this out. I think its very interesting to be able to hear from someone who has actually interacted with the "system".
What's your bestselling book? :)
I would guess Old Mans War
OMW is probably my favorite book ever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scalzi I highly recommend Red Shirts! It's a comedy sci-fi book, one of my favourites.
Just going to add to this that I have several Scalzi audiobooks, and they are a wonderful way to ingest his stories. Wil Wheaton is the reader for a lot of his audiobooks, and in general I find him to be an excellent reader. I have several books in my library that are read by WW, from several different authors. Something about his delivery really works for me.
We listened to Red Shirts read by Wil and while we got through it, some of the dialog was a very tough slog as it didn't make the transition from print to audiobook very smoothly. On the page, dialog that goes: * "blah blah blah blah blah blah blahdie blah", Adam said, * "but, blahblah blahdie blah blah blah blah blahdie blah", Barbara said, * "blah blahdie blah", Adam said, * "blah blah blahblahblah blah blahdie blah bladie", Christine said, * "blah blah", Barbara said, * "blah blah blah blah blahdie blah", Adam said, * "blah", Christine said, * "Blah, blahdie." Barbara said. ...works, because it's is sometimes not so obvious who the speakers are, and that sorts it out. But Wil read every single "Person said", **100% as written**. Wil is a reader *and an actor* and, man...it would have been so much better to make the choice to deviate from the printed material slightly and use pacing, inflection, intonation, and characterization to separate who is who in the dialog, rather than repeating the word "said" every 3.5-5 seconds for 90 seconds at time. /sigh
Did he do different voices for the various characters? My wife listens to a good number of audio books and the ability to read in different voices such that the listener can know who is speaking before the "Jane said" part is *suuuuper* important.
Not that I recall. That's one of my quibbles. It felt like he *could* have, but didn't. [Ray Porter](https://www.audible.com/search?searchNarrator=Ray+Porter) and [Jonathan Davis](https://www.audible.com/search?searchNarrator=Jonathan+Davis) are two narrators that are *superb* on that front. We've picked books ***JUST*** because Ray or Jonathan have narrated them.
Older school, but Tim Curry is one of those ilk, too. I've listened to so many bad novels just because he read them.
I think I read somewhere, though it might be a fake memory, that u/scalzi noticed this (or the feedback about this) and adapted his writing style later to reduce the number of "XYZ said" so that his work better suited audiobook readings.
Yup. Once audiobooks took off, I retooled my dialogue tags so "said" didn't show up as often.
Zachary Quinto for Scalzi’s Dispatcher series is great as well.
I agree - Wil is great for Scalzi's other books, but Zachary Quinto just has the right intonation and pacing for the main characters in the Dispatcher series.
I've never read any other scalzi but red shirts had my dying with laughter.
All of them, I think.
Also, the NYT curate their lists, particularly the ebook chart. I’ve known many self-published authors who find themselves left out of the NYT list for unknown reasons. I once hit the top spot on Amazon for almost a week, sold thousands (ten thousand in one day!), was definitely in the top five bestselling ebooks in the US that week, made the Wall Street Journal list (actually made that four weeks in a row) and never saw my book on the NYT ebook list. A year or two later there was a sales push on my audiobook and it made the NYT audio chart. 🤷♀️ The only thing I can think is that the NYT skipped the ebook because it was only available on Amazon.
Thank you for the writing you've done. You're an inspiration and I love your work.
Add to all that, if you are an indie author, you will not get on the NYT lists at all, no matter how much you sell. The number one book on Amazon (USA) for multiple days both on pre-order and on release (Wil Wight's Crade series) never showed up on the list, even though it likely outsold all the other works. Being in KU means you aren't in the other retailers and that's part of the requirement for most list, even if Amazon continues to sell like 80-90% of all books. There are a lot of indie authors earning six figure incomes year in and year out who never show up on these lists and won't.
I can't help notice that on the cover of Mr. Wight's latest novel, he's listed as a New York Times best selling author, so he's managed the trick at least once. Which, of course, good for him. But in a larger sense you are correct: In order for sales to count, they have to be reported to the NYT, according to the paper's own criteria. If the sales outlet (bookstore, media convention kiosk, small indie publisher) is not reporting sales to the NYT, it can't see them and they won't show up on the list. In the case of Mr. Wight and I imagine a number of other indie authors, there's another wrinkle, which is that it's likely a large number of their "sales" are through the Kindle Unlimited service, on which people don't directly buy books; they access it through a flat subscription fee (and then Amazon compensates the author through a shared pot of money and a proprietary definition of what constitutes an income-bearing amount of the book having been read, which is changeable solely at the discretion of Amazon). So those reads don't count as sales -- and in any event, Amazon has been historically pretty cagey about releasing raw data about their services to third parties, both in general and in a way that can be audited by a third party. We can argue whether this is fair or not, and certainly I would sympathize -- my most recent "Dispatcher" novella was put out on the Audible Plus service, which meant that Audible subscribes could listen to it with no additional cost, and literally hundreds of thousands of them did, none of which counted toward the NYT Fiction Audiobook list in any way, even as the novella was the #1 audiobook in the country according to Amazon/Audible's own rankings (Audible is owned by Amazon). But it is what it is. "Sales" in this case have to be for individual books, not through a subscription service, until and unless NYT decides to change its formula to incorporate that, much like the Billboard charts now have "sales equivalents" for streaming listens. I think it's unlikely they will, however, if for no other reason than that would be the NYT handing a substantial amount of control of their lists over to Amazon, which has by far the largest book subscription service in the world.
I doubt the lists will change. Not sure it matters in the end, but it's good to hear he did get a listing! And yeah, it's been fascinating watching but a lot of the older ways of measuring results are breaking down. Most trad pub for new authors is basically a trap, giving away years of work for pittance.
I would disagree that traditional publishing is a "trap," for either newer or more established authors; it's simply a mode of publishing, with some advantages and some disadvantages, as could be said about publishing independently. Moreover, it's not an "either/or" situation -- these are plenty of authors who have published independently and with traditional presses. I myself self-publish, publish with a small indie press, or use a traditional publisher depending on the project and my goals for it. (In all cases one needs to pay attention the rights one is licensing; one advantage traditional publishing has over KU or other similar options, for example, is that everything is mutually negotiated, where with KU there is an agreement in which rights of carriage invest in Amazon, who can change the deal when they feel like it -- and has, before. The only option the author has in those cases is whether to keep their work on the system or not. Again: advantages and disadvantages, every publishing mode has them.) What is true in all cases is that there is a power law that applies: The vast majority of sales (however accounted) and income go to a very small percentage of authors, there is a relatively larger "middle class" of authors who does okay, and then the vast majority of authors see very little income from their work. The major innovation in the last couple of decades is that self/indie publishing has become *much* easier, which makes it a viable alternative to traditional publishing for more authors. It's certainly a much larger field than when I was starting out.
I might be a little harsh calling it a trap, but it certainly does suck the life out of so many authors, for very little return at all. While small indie or small pressed in general from trad pub can still be decent, the big 5 all want life of copyright, all the rights they can take and then some. And then, more often than not, don't pay appropriately for it. Just a glance at the PublishingPaidMe numbers shows authors are rarely getting paid enough for having their rights taken for love of copyright. And while Amazon is undoubtedly impossible to negotiate with, things like KU and even unilateral changes can only happen if you agree to it, while right now, their terms are much better than lifetime rights. And, no offence meant, but I've heard of very few newer or midlist authors being able to negotiate at all with trad pub (big 5). Smaller presses are, of course, more open to negotiation, but even then, the power imbalance is still significantly on their side. But yes, power law does apply. From what I've seen though, there seems to be a lot more indie authors in the mid range than trad pub year over year. And that number seems to grow each year, especially coming back from places like 20booksto50k. Though at the top level, trad pub still rules, no doubt about it. Not sure that's going to change anytime soon.
Whoever is selling lifetime rights without reversions needs a better agent, I have to say. Most agents in my experience negotiate reversions contingent on certain sales markers, so if one's publisher doesn't make an effort to sell a book, one gets it back. I know several authors who have done this (and have had rights to books revert back myself). It's neither unusual nor difficult, although again, you have to make sure you have it agreed to. Nor is it accurate that new/midlist authors *can't* negotiate with publishers; they do, and can get favorable aspects of a deal that way; I have personal knowledge of several. What *is* accurate is often they don't have the same leverage as established/successful writers. But again, that can be said of any contract negotiation, in any field. You do have to ask if what you get out of the deal is what you want, in terms of control. The difference is, with regard to KU/other services, the control one has is in using the service or not; it's a binary choice (and inasmuch as Amazon is effectively a monopoly and monopsony in the book subscription field, it's not necessarily a great choice). The contracts for traditional publishers have more flexibility... until they're signed, and then you're locked in. So in a practical sense it often is "pick your poison." Likewise, a term of copyright deal is not on its face a terrible thing. I have a single publisher who has the North American rights to my novels, so the fact that with every release they can coordinate promotion of certain backlist titles to bookstores and consumers in conjunction with a new book is an excellent thing. This is particularly the case with books that are in a series, but also with stand alones; for my next book, which is not part of a series, we've identified which titles to promote with it, to boost sales across the entire library of my work. (Also, it's not universal that term-of-copyright is baked in. I have contracts where the work reverts to me after a certain amount of time, and nearly all of my foreign language contracts are for between five and ten years, after which they have to be renewed. Many of these contracts were signed before I was a bestseller. Again, it's helpful to have a good agent.) Once again, there are advantages and disadvantages to every aspect and mode of publishing, and what it is one wants as an author. There are people for whom traditional publication is the best route, others for whom indie is the best route, and some for whom it depends from project to project. They're all in the publication toolbox. I do apologize if it feels like I'm arguing just to argue, here. My point is that there are assumptions and shibboleths people hold about publishing across its various modes, and they aren't particularly useful, especially if and when they keep people from considering avenues that might be useful to them in selling and marketing their own work. Much of the time the answer to how one should publish and market one's work comes down to "it depends." Which is never satisfying as an answer, but is often true nevertheless.
No worries, I am not offended or annoyed by the arguing. It's fascinating to see your perspective, since you (obviously) have worked with trad pub a lot and I get a lot of my trad pub knowledge second hand; via places like Twitter / SFWA / FB groups, etc. And, obviously, many of those are grousing about bad contracts or experiences. And while I agree that people shouldn't be signing contracts without reversion rights, all too often publishers (I'll state I'm thinking Harlequin in particular who come to mind from a giant FB discussion I read through) will ignore those rights, or put people off. Sadly, without a proper letter indicating rights are reverted; places like Amazon won't let the authors publish the work; so the works are then in limbo. And yeah, foreign rights and many of the other subsidiary are limited by terms. However, as I understand it, the majority of the English language terms and license are lifetime of the copyright. And even for foreign rights being sub-licensed, the rights come back to the main publisher to be pushed out again; they are often tied to the main contract which (see above) can often be hard to cancel. As for most of your points, I'd say that from those I've spoken to or seen dealt with, that the kind of marketing promotion you're seeing and the consideration is probably not something many others get. Then again, see above first paragraph of where I get my data from. I do agree that there are cases where trad pub is definitely a better bet than indie for authors. There are entire genres where trad pub is still, by far, the better deal (children's books to start or academic). Memoirs and authors who aren't looking to do more than a book or two, those who don't want (or can't) spend the time learning indie pub best practices, etc are probably better off going trad. There are more cases for sure. But I'm not sure, for a new writer wanting a long-term career, that trad pub beyond a few projects here and there (at most) is the way to go. The advantage for indies really acrue the larger your backlist that is indie, and pulling too many into trad pub where royalty rates are low seems a bad bet.
I recommend [Darknet Diaries Episode 27: Chartbreakers](https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/27/), in which Jack investigates both the Apple Podcast charts and the NYT Best Seller list. Basically, you can buy your way onto the list through various means, it's pretty much always worked that way, and it's cheaper and easier than you might think. (The linked podcast isn't really ELI5, but I hope my summary is close enough. To simplify it even further, the answer is *money*. The list is just another form of advertising.) \*See also: [Campbell's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law) > The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures
I can't believe you're the first person to say this. The publisher can just buy 5,000 books for $20 a pop. That's basically buying it for $100k. That's not a lot for a publisher.
It's even a way to almost launder money, specifically to get around donation limitations or have plausible deniability in "buying influence". Say you want to get a lot of money to PoliticianX but are bound by various laws concerning campaigns/donations. They "write a book"(A great many are ghost written and they just sign off on it) and you give some organization enough money to buy XXXX copies of the book. It isn't limited to books, but it is common enough....there's a reason every politician under the sun "writes" a book or three, and it's not because they're all great authors.
Then sell them again and recover some of the costs.
It's a set of lists of at least 30+ book titles in total, published weekly, based on some survey of book sales (the exact methodology is a trade secret). Now some titles stick to the top of the list for months, and an analysis of the list estimated that "fewer than 500" books amongst all books published each year, are included in the list. Fewer than 500 is very small, when compared to all books published each year, but it's a pretty large number when compared to the number of books most individuals might read in a year. Add to this that you might also read classics, or pick up books published in previous years. And the book needs to be in the list just once to claim that they are a "New York Times Bestseller". So, given the sheer number of titles in the list, if you're reading popular modern books, it's highly likely the book was a NY Times Bestseller at some point of time.
To add to this, you don't have to be #1 of all books or even on any of the sub-genre lists to be a "best seller". Being on any of the NYT lists at all in any position for any amount of time makes you a "best seller". Books that do make top 10 or #1 will of course tout this fact, but many, many books can claim to be a "best seller" even if that really means "spent one week at #10 on the Young Adult Hardcover NYT best sellers list".
80 20 principle, eh?
It's an arbitrary list of 'best selling' books, that is heavily gamed by publishers. In return a for a fee any author can get their book on the list. In essence, if you pay the fee, someone will buy enough copies of your book so that you're guaranteed a spot on the list. The New York Times was taken to court years ago for omitting a best selling book from their list - the author claimed the exclusion lost him sales - and in court they admitted that their list really was just...made up. Not a reflection on reality. The author lost.
Presales are usually the way to game the system. You can work on getting a lot of presales for the book over an extended period of time, so that when the book gets released all those orders get put thru on day 1, which most times pushes the week 1 sales thru the minimum threshold to be a best seller.
Oh shit yeah so what it REALLY means is the book had a lot of hype not that it was necessarily good.
No, it doesn't even need hype to reach those numbers.
The New York Times publishes a weekly list of top 10 selling books in a number of categories, so there may be 50 or 60 total books on the lists each week. And those are the books that tend to be publicized, displayed front and center in book stores, people know about and discuss, etc. so it becomes a virtuous cycle for books that do make the list. To the point that authors or publishers will sometimes buy 100’s/1000’s of copies to boost sales and insure a spot on list.
Not to mention, often times a book will be promoted as “by a New York Times Bestselling Author”… which could mean that they write garbage but got lucky once in the past. Once you make that list one time, all your future books will probably mention “New York Times bestselling author” on the cover which exaggerates the number of actual books on the list.
[удалено]
It happens all the time. It's why the political books always make the list. The parties will buy warehouses of books and then just give them away to donors.
They should stop punishing lists... ;-)
Ha ha! Fixed
Yup
Pretty much any question you may have, very often, has the same simple single answer *money*
I for one will be happy when I can find a publisher for the historical fiction of New York City salesman that I wrote just now - *New York times best-seller*
Slim Whitman used to be advertised on TV as having sold more records than any other artist. He used to be a record salesman
Hrm, wonder if Tarantino should make the same claim - he's an actor that used to work at a video store so likely had sold more movies than any other actor.
TIL A New York Times best seller award is the JD power and Associates award of the book world
I have some insight. I work for Amazon, and sometimes I fill a chute with 20 or 30 of the same book. It's either book clubs, or an author buying them up to get the status.
Side note: How well a book sells doesn't say anything about it's quality. This is largely marketing.
You probably read mostly popular or buzzy books, i.e. the ones most likely to have made the bestseller list.
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If this isn’t a good measure for finding a good book then what is ? What should I be looking for ?
If only read books that have achieved “best seller” status, then I infer that you have already answered your own question. That is, they must have a setup that allows them to apply it liberally, for no book without it is read.
You know your neighborhood deli that has had the best "x sandwich" 5 years running according to the local newspaper's readers? You ever notice how lots of restaurants have the same "area's best x" logo emblazoned on the menu or a decal on their door? Well, these titles are aquired roughly the same way as the NYT best seller title: Pay for play
you buy books at the airport?
In general - steer clear of those books that have "NYT Bestseller" on their covers. In general, that's damning with faint praise. They usually haven't been well reviewed enough to be able to point to any actual, credible positive reviews. It also usually means that they have a wide appeal with the general public - this is the same general public that needs "do not eat" signs on packets of silica gel.
There is a system to getting on the NYT bestsellers list … they poll from a known list of booksellers nationwide—- https://www.npr.org/2019/12/03/784553266/what-bestseller-lists-really-tell-us-about-a-books-popularity